Look Back
by lavellanpls
Summary: Post-Trespasser. There are times when Solas watches the Inquisitor in her dreams. And there are times when someone else watches him. Late at night, lost somewhere far and deep, he dreams of Lavellan.


Solas can say little for certain of the days to come, but about one thing he has no doubts. Whatever happens, whatever trials come to pass, he will never forget her. Couldn't, even if he wanted to—but of course, he knows he will never want to. Lavellan is fire and fury and _justice,_ and no matter how bitterly their story may end, he would never regret it beginning. Couldn't.

" _Var lath vir suledin_ ," she'd said to him. Before he kissed her for the final time. Before he took her arm—his failed anchor—and left her kneeling on broken stones.

 _Our love has the strength to withstand this._

Solas only wishes that were true. Sometimes he visits her in dreams, against his better judgement. Never close enough to touch, but still he can watch, if only from afar. He does not deserve even this small comfort—tells himself as much with silent inward curses, but cannot seem to stay away. To be expected, he supposes. Lilith always was his biggest weakness.

Sometimes she notices his presence. Reaches for him with her remaining hand, the one left graciously unmaimed by his mistakes, but of course she can never reach him. Is never close enough to touch.

She does not deserve this torment, and Solas will never be sorry enough for it.

* * *

It is not often Solas loses himself to dreams. He prefers to maintain full focus when traversing the Fade. Normally he is alert in his ventures, vigilant; is careful to keep constant control of the bend and flow of reality around him. But every now and again, during rare moments of deepest sleep, he drifts. Loses himself to the whims of his sleeping subconscious and sinks into a hazy mix of memories and comforting half-truths. In those rare silent moments, lost somewhere far and deep, Solas dreams of Lavellan.

Sometimes she is only a shadow in the bleary backdrop of his dreams. A phantom with a familiar face, too far to touch. Sometimes he drifts through old memories, reenacting murky segments of the past like re-reading a worn book, and those dreams are simultaneously his most treasured and dreaded. Within every fond memory, he finds Lilith.

Tonight they are back at Skyhold. Solas finds himself in the rotunda, attempting to read a book he cannot remember on the settee, but Lavellan lies with her head on his lap, and she is far more interesting. "Do you think it's possible to keep a deepstalker as a pet?" she asks, and looks up at him expectantly. A familiar conversation. He's not surprised his subconscious chose to revisit it.

He finds himself parroting back a reply he's already given, the response automatic. "Perhaps _you_ could, but I cannot speak for anyone else."

"They're reptiles, aren't they?" she presses. "Er. Of some sort. If you can train a lizard, you can't tell me you couldn't train a deepstalker."

"You cannot train lizards," he points out.

"You can train snakes," she counters. "Sort of. At the very least you can endear them to you enough that they won't eat you, which, let's be honest, is really all I ask for in a pet. That, and surprise attack abilities."

"Is it a pet you want, or a small minion?"

She snorts; pushes herself up to her knees and shuffles forward to place a light kiss to his cheek. "Have I ever told you how much I love the weird way you pronounce 'minion'?"

Yes. She has.

When Solas awakes, it carries the shock of a punch to the gut.

* * *

The dreams continue, an indulgent foray into oblivion. Tonight he's teaching her to dance. This, Solas considers in a haze, is one of his most oft-visited memories. It's only days before the ball at Halamshiral, and of course Lavellan chooses _now_ to inform their horrified ambassador that she doesn't know how to dance.

"I know how to _dance,_ " she insists, even as she trips on a spin. "I just don't know how to _formally_ dance."

Solas holds back the beginnings of a grin. "And what manner of informal dancing is it you are so well-versed in?"

"None that will go over well at the Winter Palace," she smirks, and this time when he spins her she arcs her back and swivels her hips, movements fluid and snakelike; twirls in to grind back obscenely against him. Yes. He remembers this _very_ well.

"Please do not do that at the Winter Palace," he says, but he's already broken into a smile. "At least not directly in front of the Empress."

"Give me some room," she orders with a playful shimmy. "I think I can still do a split, if I land right…"

"Do not do that _anywhere_ in the Winter Palace."

She wiggles along to a song she can only half-sing, and for a while Solas forgets he's in a memory. A dead moment, long passed. The façade abruptly cracks when her voice snags on a broken hum.

She's crying.

She isn't supposed to cry. _Didn't_ cry; he would have remembered that. Remembered- "Lilith?" The name feels wrong on his tongue. This wasn't how it happened.

She swipes quickly at her eyes; pastes on a smile only semi-convincing. "I'm fine, sorry. It's nothing. Let's just dance, yeah?" She clasps his hand tight and pulls them into a slow dance, but her fingers dig just a little too hard into his shoulder, as if he might float away otherwise. "Just…dance with me."

"Dancing with an elven apostate will win you few favors with the court," he mutters, but that is wrong, too; those words are from another time, another memory. Suddenly the walls around them begin to shift, changing shape under a falling shadow.

Lilith tilts her head up and catches his mouth in a tender kiss. "Give me time. I'm sure I can change some minds." But this isn't right; isn't what happened. "Maybe we'll change a lot of things."

A familiar shape hangs from her neck. A wolf's jawbone, strung through cord.

"Just dance with me a little longer. Please."

She's wearing his necklace. But-

"Please, Solas. _Come back_."

He awakes gasping.

* * *

Solas does not always remember his dreams. There are times he wakes up in a blind panic, heartbeat racing, but the details shrink and scatter like shadows in the morning light until all he's left with is the foggy memory of a nightmare and the lingering echo of a too-familiar laugh. Whatever haunts his dreams, he remembers only a terrible sensation of sinking. And he remembers Lavellan.

He touches a still shaking hand to his face, and can't remember why he's crying.

Tonight he dreams of the Hinterlands. This memory is old—dug up from a time before Skyhold, before their kiss. When Solas is still wary, still heavy under the weight of a dark disillusionment, and in contrast Lavellan _shines_. She is speaking to a hunter in the Crossroads, hands on her hips in rapt attention, and oh, he _loves_ this memory. Scenes speed forward and skip, images blurring into one another with a dreamy seamlessness, and suddenly he is following her in rapid pursuit of a fleeing ram.

They spend the better part of the day hunting down wild rams, Lavellan shouting frantic orders to Sera to "Shoot it! _Shoot it!_ " as she sprints after one with her axe raised. Sera spits out something profane as she races past him, and Solas looks to Cassandra with a baffled sort of shrug. This is their Herald; their chosen one. Their only hope. Launching a violent assault against local wildlife.

Up ahead, Lilith throws herself full-body into a screaming tackle, latches onto a ram's horns, and is dragged, swearing, up the hillside. "I've got one!" he hears her shout. "Quick, _someone shoot it!_ "

Another hazy slip forward in time, and the sun sits low on the red horizon. Their party is battered from a surprise run-in with bandits, but Lavellan marches eagerly ahead of them, entirely too energetic. In the chill of approaching evening, they help her personally drag ten slaughtered rams back to the hunter in the Crossroads. She is still bleeding from a shallow dagger wound on her cheek. Her swollen black eye crinkles as she smiles. "Here," she says, and Solas' heart casually breaks at the warm swell of elation in her voice. "Maybe this will help."

The refugees eat well that night. Better, they survive to see another day. Lavellan accepts nothing in return; just slips away, wordless, to pursue her next quest. Solas remembers all of this. "That was kind, what you did for the refugees," he hears himself say, and the memory of her rolls her eyes.

"What else am I supposed to do, let them _starve?_ I think at this point it's just a matter of social decorum."

"Never the less, it was still an expenditure of time and energy." He glances down at her clothes, still sticky with spilled blood half her own. "Among other things."

Lilith seems to catch the object of his gaze. She self-consciously swipes at her bloody cheek. "Yeah, well, they're people," she offers with a shrug. "People are worth it."

"Simply on principle of existing?" he asks, and she only laughs.

"On principle of being _people_." They pass a worn Tyrdda Bright-Axe monument, and her bruised lips crack in a smile. "There's a lot to admire in a species self-actualized enough to build their own gods and monsters."

"A potential for creating false deities has rarely done the world good."

"For now," she argues. "But it's still early. If we can build gods today, just think of what people can create _tomorrow_."

"They could create a worse monster," he protests, and he never forgets the way her eyes glitter. Even in the end of things to come, he will always remember that. She grins, and her eyes shine like the sun through glass. "But that's what makes it so beautiful, isn't it? Something with the freedom for evil, and then it chooses _good_."

"And what if it makes another choice?"

"What if it doesn't?" she challenges, and elbows him teasingly in the side. "So _grim_. I'm starting to think Varric's nickname for you may actually be sarcastic."

When he awakens that morning, it takes him an agonizing moment too long to remember why he cannot feel her sleeping beside him.

* * *

Tonight they're in a bed he does not recognize. A room he has never seen. Lavellan lies tucked against him, murmuring something into his bare chest. Her voice catches on a rising sob; breaks, and she presses herself closer with a broken exhale. He does not remember this. "I still love you, you know," she says. "I'm not sorry for that."

There is no previous answer to call upon this time. This is not a dream he's had before. Dazed, he replies, "Why would you be sorry?" but she's crying too steadily to answer him. He realizes her hand is missing when he wraps his arms around her, cut off at the elbow, and something strikes him as wrong. When did this happen?

"We don't have to choose this for ourselves," she whispers. "We don't have to look back."

He holds her close and whispers words of blind comfort. " _Vhenan_ …"

But something is wrong. The word only makes her sob.

Solas wakes himself up with a choking gasp, and realizes in a wash of horror that for a moment he'd stopped breathing.

* * *

For a terrible moment, Solas begins to wonder if his guilt is somehow warping his memories; if his own lurking demons managed to infiltrate his dreams, taking the form of the very object of his agony. A wild Dalish girl with golden eyes and a death wish. A subconscious manifestation of his failures.

He searches for her in her dreams when he cannot hold back any longer. Still from across an endless distance. Still too far to touch. He sees her standing motionless at the center of a too-bright field of embrium, but her back is turned to him, and from so far away he can only make out the flutter of silver hair in an unearthly breeze. This time she does not reach for him.

* * *

Something is wrong in his dreams tonight. Wherever his drifting mind has brought him is tainted, warped by his own inner turmoil into someplace _wrong_. There are no warm memories calling to him here, no hazy beacons of past peace. There is only a deep and endless blackness, heavy in its oppressive silence, and Solas feels as though he's standing at the bottom of a terrible ocean.

He sees Lavellan, a guiding light in the void, but she doesn't smile when he reaches her. Her arms are crossed, fingernails digging trenches into the flesh of her arms, and she looks as though she's been crying. This is not one of his memories. Not-

"You were supposed to trust me," she says, and her voice trembles. "Damn it, we could have… It's not _fair._ I _waited_ for you. I waited and I _forgave_ and-" She cuts herself off with a sharp inhale and lets it slowly release. "…I love you, stupid. And I could have…fuck. You don't understand. You don't…" When she looks up into his eyes, he feels himself drowned in a sea of troubles. "I wish I could show you."

She reaches for him, but it's wrong.

The golden irises of her eyes are too bright; flickering between furious shades of amber as if a fire blazes somewhere inside her skull. When she reaches for him the lines of her vallaslin sear red-hot against her skin, burn down into her every vein, every artery, until she is alight beneath a twisted molten web of blood and tattoos. Beneath her clothes, within the cage of her ribs, he feels a pulsing heat like a solar flare.

"Come back," she pleads, and everything is wrong. He twines trembling fingers with hers, and the burn sears all the way through to the hollows of his eyelids. " _Var lath vir suledin_."

He wakes himself up screaming.

* * *

For a fleeting moment he considers the idea that a demon is stalking him in his dreams, disguised in Lilith's form. But the thought lasts not even a full moment. Solas knows the Fade; knows demons, spirits, _dreams,_ and this troubling phantom with his lover's face, this entity of imagined affection, is…something else. Possibly something far more problematic.

Solas is many things, not all of which are virtuous, but he is _steadfast_ —he will not fail in his goals again. Cannot. But in the oblivion of deepest sleep, his control slips, and he is left defenseless at the mercy of a heart he'd once thought hardened.

He dreams, longingly, of Lavellan.

* * *

He dares not visit this memory often. He's too afraid frequent revisiting may spoil it; expose a perfect moment to the coldness of the present and somehow _corrupt_ it. But tonight his dreams drop him deeper into the abyss, into a memory from too long ago.

Solas had never planned for it to happen. Had, in fact, staunchly vowed it _wouldn't_. But tonight he is back at Skyhold, Lavellan in his arms. He means to end it with a kiss—nearly succeeds, even—but then he's pulled back by a tug at his shoulder, and he knows he's done for as soon as she speaks.

"Stay with me," she says, and Solas cannot refuse. They kiss, and in the foggy glow of memory, it feels like it lasts a lifetime.

No matter what phantom guilt would plague him, Solas would always remember this fondly. There were precious few memories left he hadn't poisoned—this one was…sacred, almost. Cherished. Lilith is bold and forward and _entirely_ too flirtatious, but this is their first, and everything is different. Softer. She wraps her arms around him; smiles into each unhurried kiss with blissful contentment. They kiss too eagerly, accidentally bumping teeth, and Lavellan laughs. It's the sweetest sound he's ever heard.

When he moves inside her, the world around them seems to fade, and Solas can no longer tell where dream and memory end. Lilith is so _eager,_ so ardent in her every roaming touch. She gasps when he moves too suddenly, too much, and he freezes as if she's just screamed. "Are you alright?" he asks, and the concern runs just as deep now as it did then. Of all his tangled motivations, past or future, he never wanted to hurt her. Still doesn't.

" _Fine,_ " she huffs, "I'm fine; I'm _good_. I am… _very_ good." She takes him deeper with a slow, careful rock, her low whine building into a pleased giggle. "I am very, very, good." She lets her eyelids slip shut; sucks her lip between her teeth and takes a deep, steady breath. "Are you good? _Fine_. Or-"

" _Perfect,_ " he whispers with a savored kiss to her scarred cheek. He has never in his life felt the world more perfect.

Afterward, in the hazy afterglow, Solas thinks of a thousand reasons for regret—he'd lied to her, _deceived;_ had no right to this kind of intimacy, no possible way to deserve it. But Lavellan nestles her head atop his chest with a pleased hum, fingertips tracing lazy shapes against his skin, and asks, "Have I ever told you the story of how I got the scar on my face?"

"Not that I can recall. Does it carry some deep significance?"

"No," she says, "but it's a really funny story. And coincidentally explains why I will never in my life trust a monkey or a man named Jack." Still naked beside him, she weaves a leg through his, and rattles on with what he is sure is a greatly exaggerated tale. Sometimes Solas still thinks about it, even after all these years. A curious anecdote about a scar. The memory coaxes a smile.

"I miss you," Lilith admits, and he's still too wrapped up in a blissful past to notice the incongruity. The break from remembered script. "I miss this."

He runs a hand up over her arm and melts at the way she leans into the warmth of his touch. "Miss what?"

"Nothing," she says, and breathes a warm sigh against his skin. "Don't think about it right now. Not yet. Let's just…stay like this. Please. Just for now. Before… Just _stay_. Please."

He pulls her tighter to him, but the walls of sleep are already buckling. "I love you," he says, and it echoes through every memory.

Tonight Solas wakes up crying, and cannot remember why. A nightmare, he supposes—although he can't seem to recall the details. Another moment and he can't even recall the subject.

In a daze, he remembers only Lavellan.


End file.
